NO PROFIT IN SELLING WINS TO OTHERS. Via University Diaries, first evidence of excess capacity in college football.

[Nevada state universities chancellor Jim] Rogers said Tuesday he was frustrated with [Nevada - Las Vegas]'s losing football season. The team is 1-10 and has been ranked near the bottom of all Division I-A football teams.

"Why the hell would you have a football team when nobody goes to the games?" Rogers told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

[Nevada-Reno]'s football and basketball teams have fared better than UNLV's in recent years. The university's football team has an 8-3 record this season.

Although regents have not typically managed athletic programs, Rogers said he wanted the board to monitor the programs and determine ways to make the programs self-sufficient.

Since it last appeared in the NCAA Final Four in 1991, the UNLV men's basketball team has "become stuck far below mediocrity," Rogers said in the memo.

Was that Final Four run during or after Jerry Tarkanian's tenure at the Reform School Rebels? Faustian bargain, indeed.

The article goes on to note some not-so-hidden subsidies to the athletic program.

Gerry Bomotti, UNLV vice president for finance, said the school's entire athletic program earned $1.2 million last year, excluding revenue and expenses from the Thomas & Mack Center.

But the program last year received from taxpayers $4.8 million toward operating expenses and tuition and fee waivers.

That $4.8 million figure might be a lower bound on the cost of the program. The opportunity cost of a tuition waiver is a bit difficult to reckon. One that is used to recruit football players to help Boise State look good cannot be used to recruit a doctoral student or a future math teacher.